The Fire-Dwellers (29 page)

  — I know what you mean. I’ve felt the same myself. What can I say that’ll be any use?

Nothing comes to her, so at last she turns over on her side and after a while she falls asleep.

The place is a prison but not totally so. It must be an island, surely, some place where people are free to walk around but nobody can get away. The huts are made of poplar poles chinked with mud and they have flat roofs where the people sleep. There is a ladder leading up to each sleeping plateau, and when she and Mac are safely on top, they pull up the rope ladder after them. The children are not here. They are in another place, grown and free, nothing to worry about for her at this moment. Lying together on the bed of leaves, she and Mac listen to the guards’ boots. The legions are marching tonight through the streets and their boot leather strikes hard against the pavements and there is nowhere to go but here

T
he gulls fly flashingly above the sun-lightened water, then latch on to air currents and glide so slow-motion that they seem to be hovering unmoving in the morning bright air at the city’s rim where the longshoremen shout and the vessels move in ponderously to be unladen like great sea cows swimming in to be milked.

Stacey looks at the harbor, half an eye on her watch. She has not come down here to observe the gulls and ships, but she cannot yet bring herself to walk along Grenoble Street and enter the one door she must enter.

  — I’ve got to. Can’t stay away from home much longer. It isn’t fair to Katie, to expect her to look after Jen all day. Come on, Stacey. Okay, in a minute when I feel stronger. Just a minute. You haven’t got the guts of a grasshopper, that’s your trouble. Come on. Not later. Now.

She turns and walks quickly. She reaches Grenoble Street and her footsteps dwindle, dawdle past cafés and the cheap hotels where old men doze in the barely waking lobbies which will blare and brawl when night falls. Stacey finds Honest Ernie’s cut-price children’s clothes, and enters the doorway at
the side. Up the brown linoleum stairs to the second landing. She stops, then, being unable yet to knock.

  — I can’t go in. I can’t. My head’s spinning. I feel really awful. What if I throw up here? It wouldn’t alter the smell of this hallway much, that’s for sure. Go on – knock. I should’ve come before. I should at least have inquired. Maybe nobody found her, and she’s dead, and when I open the door there she’ll be, decomposing away like sixty in the chair, her head lolling and her eyes just as blind in death as they were in life. It was crazy to come here. I should’ve phoned the police, the day after Buckle crashed. But I didn’t. And now I can’t. They’d say
This is a hell of a fine time to be telling us, lady
.

Stacey knocks. There is a flurry of movement inside the room, and Stacey’s stomach begins to cramp in apprehension. The door is opened, only a crack, and a face peers out. A girl with long uncombed hair, sharp catlike features breathing suspicion.

Whatcha want?

I – didn’t Mrs. Fennick live here?

Who? Oh, you mean the old blind dame? Yeh. But her son got himself wiped out in a crash. He was a trucker. I used to live on the top floor but I moved, see? This place is better. Anything else you want to know? Such as the story of my life, for instance?

What what happened to her?

Oh, they took her away.

They?

Yeh, Salvation Army or some do-good bunch like that. It was real funny, the way it happened. The way I heard is, they told her about the son and said they was coming back the next day to fetch her off somewheres, one of them homes, like, I guess. Well, she tries to cut her throat, see? Only she can’t find the butcher knife. When they come in the morning there she was, still crawling around the floor, feeling everything, but she still hadn’t found it. Ever see her? Built like the back of a barn, she was. She must’ve looked real cute, crawling around on her hands and knees, with her great big tits bumping along on the floor, there.

I see. Well thanks very much

The girl laughs, and Stacey can hear Buckle’s laughter again, the stone-grained quality of laughter long used as both weapon and wall. The girl imitates what she has presumably heard as phony politeness in Stacey’s voice.

Oh, don’t mention it, I’m sure. Always glad to oblige.

The door slams. Stacey walks down the stairs and out into the street. She walks without noticing the sidewalk, the people, the buildings.

  — She may not have been much, but she didn’t abort him all that time ago, at least not before his birth. She had him and brought him up. She did that. What could have been in her mind that day I came here with Buckle? Or any of the days, for that matter. But he never turned her out, whatever else he may have said or done. When I think of the number of times I felt like clobbering him for coming around so often to our place, for coming around at all. Buckle – you can’t be dead. I can’t cry here. What would everybody think, passing by? But I am, damn damn damn. That’s right, Stacey – requiem for a truck driver. You really time things well.

Stacey hears, strangely, her name being spoken by a woman’s voice, a voice raucous as the gulls’.

Stacey hey Stacey

She blinks. Coming towards her is a woman whose black hair has been upfrizzed until it resembles the nest of some large wild bird. Her dark eyes and her features are prairie Indian but not entirely. Her skin, or what can be seen of it under the thick crust of make-up, is a pale brown. Her mouth has been lipsticked into a wide bizarre cupid’s bow. She is wearing a smeared hem-drooping mauve silkish dress which reveals her body’s blunt thickness, the once-high breasts that are dugs now.

It
is
Stacey, ain’t it? Stacey Cameron? I dunno your married name.

Yes that’s right I I

Valentine Tonnerre. Val. Doncha remember me?

Well, for heaven’s sake. Well, sure I do. Of course.

Stacey does not know what to say. She would like to go back in time, to explain that she never meant the town’s invisible stabbing, but this is not possible, and it was hers, too, so she cannot edge away from it.

  — Valentine. So-named because born on February 14. Her sister once told me when I said it wasn’t a girl’s name. Val must be three or four years younger than I am. My God, she looks ten years older. Her sister? Her sister? What was it?

You were younger than I, Val. It was your sister who was my age. Piquette. What I heard something what was it

Valentine’s face, expert at concealment, takes on blankness.

Yeh. You seen it in the
Manawaka Banner
, maybe. They wrote it up there. Maybe you remember she had TB in the bone, one leg. She used to limp quite a lot. Doctor Macleod, there, got it fixed up, after quite a while, when she was a kid. So then she kind of took off, like, soon as she could. She married this guy from Winnipeg, English fella. Bastard walked out on her and the two kids. She went back to the old place. You know, cooked and that for Dad and the boys. Happened in winter. They used to make red biddy down there. If I know Piquette, she was stoned out of her mind, most likely. The others were out. We had one of them big old wood stoves. Place caught fire. She never got out. The kids neither.

Val I didn’t know

  — Or did I just forget, put it from mind?

Yeh well. You feel like a cuppa coffee?

Sure. Gosh, it’s nice to see you. I don’t often see anybody from Manawaka.

  — I’m overdoing it and she will know. I don’t want to have
coffee with her. Even her presence is a reproach to me, for all I’ve got now and have been given and still manage to bitch on and on about it. And a reproach for the sins of my fathers, maybe. The debts are inherited and how could the damage ever be undone or forgiven? I don’t want to, but I seem to believe in a day of judgment, just like all my Presbyterian forebears did, only I don’t think it’ll happen in the clouds or elsewhere and I don’t think I’ll be judged for the same things they thought they’d be. Piquette and her kids, and the snow and fire. Ian and Duncan in a burning house.

Well, c’mon then, Stacey. Here’s the Emerald Café, right here. They’ll put it on the cuff sometimes. But I don’t guess you’d have to be too interested in that.

Well sure, let’s go in

  — And yet I resent her making a crack like that.

They sit down in a booth and order two coffees. Stacey lights a cigarette and offers one to Valentine, who takes it.

How long you been here, Val?

Oh, going on three years now. Won’t be here much longer.

Why? You going somewhere?

Valentine smiles, the ruby creamed mouth now askew.

Yeh. Long trip. The last one.

How do you mean?

Don’t ask, Stacey. You don’t want to know.

  — Heroin? Booze? Sickness? A knife under the ribs? Luke was right. You can’t ask. You don’t have the right. You haven’t lived in that particular cave.

Okay. I’m sorry, Val.

For what? I don’t give a fuck. Today tomorrow next week, it’s all the same to me. How you been, Stacey? Lived here long?

Yeh. Quite a few years now. I’m okay I guess

You sound pissed off.

Yeh, well. My husband works for a guy who’s got it in for him for no reason and there’s the four kids and things get kind of

What’s he do, your old man?

Salesman. Ever heard of Richalife?

To Stacey’s astonishment, Valentine Tonnerre leans back in the booth and laughs, smoking at the same time and then going into a spasm of coughing. She fumbles for the coffee cup, drinks, and then looks at Stacey with uninterpretable eyes.

Yeh. I heard of it. Especially the guy they got there now. I seen his picture in the paper and then I seen him once on the street. God, I laughed so hard I nearly puked. You must’ve laughed too.

Stacey stares.

Laughed? What at?

You mean you never recognized him? Well, he was younger than you, a few years, so you probably never knew him, to speak of. I knew him, though. Jesus, I often thought of touching him for a few bucks, but then again, I’m not that smart and it might not work. Someday when I’m high maybe I’ll do it.

Val – what are you talking about?

Him. Thor Thorlakson or whatever the hell he calls himself. Yeh, sure, he’s had his pan all jazzed up by doctors whaddya call it some kinda surgery and I am damn sure he wears built-up shoes. When he took me into the bushes way back when, he was in high school but he sure wasn’t that tall, and his name was Vernon Winkler.

Stacey’s stunned disbelief alters only gradually, as the recollection filters blurredly back.

Val I didn’t know I didn’t know

Whatsamatter? You look scared. You scared or something?

Stacey is hardly aware of speaking aloud, or to anyone.

That’s why he was down on Mac. Nothing to do with Mac. Only with me. But how could I have known that? And he didn’t have to worry. I didn’t recognize him. How could I? I never knew him at all, not really. I only ever noticed him that once, as far as I can remember, but I wouldn’t have associated
that
kid with Thor, for heaven’s sake. Maybe he remembered me, once he knew where I came from, or maybe he was only scared because he didn’t know whether I knew all about him or not. My God, he probably thought there was something ominous about it, every time I mentioned the prairies or the name Thor – but there wasn’t. There wasn’t. And now he’ll find an excuse to fire Mac or else he’ll keep on needling until Mac has to quit. Mac can’t stand to be without a job not now

Stacey pulls herself together and looks across the café table. Valentine Tonnerre is leaning on the red arborite surface, her chin in her hands. Her eyes are watchful, unsympathetic, even pleased.

Shit, Stacey, you got worries? Go ahead – make me laugh.

You could be right. Then again, maybe not. I got to get home now, Val. My kids will be wondering where I am.

Yeh. I guess your kids would.

Val did you ever you know have you got any

The known and total stranger sitting opposite shakes her head, laughs her coarse-textured laugh and takes a cigarette out of Stacey’s pack on the table.

I got a couple somewhere I kind of lost track

  — The necessary lie. Where? How many? With whom? How much does it hurt? The questions that can’t be asked or answered. All I can do is go. Now she wants me to go. Too little can be said, because there is too much to say. And I’m relieved to be going, because I can’t cope here.